Larger and/or well-funded funded companies have been zeroing in on various metropolitan areas, such as New York City as of late. GetTaxi, TaxiMagic, Hailo are the largest and most aggressive. They all have a similar app that is built around a “pre-arranged” or “dispatch” service with a mobile credit card payment feature. They are well developed and marketed apps but they cannot crack into the NYC market without substantial regulatory change and industry acceptance. The 13,250 yellow cabs in NYC are not legally allowed to be “dispatched.”
To date, no one has successfully created an innovative app to help passengers find taxicabs, or drivers find passengers, in the NYC market. There is one exception called Cab Sense which suggests streets and corners people should walk to in Manhattan for the best odds of getting a cab via a GPS map. It appears to have minimum utility or adoption and yet it is the only one NYC promotes on some of their web sites as a tool because there are no others.
The means of securing a taxi ride are generally defined by two distinct methods:
1) a “dispatch” or “pre-arranged” connection of a person to a taxi driver thru various means . . . (calling a dispatch center, calling a cab driver directly, or other means such as through the use of an app through a mobile phone or a computer). The key characteristic is that a person makes a general request for a taxi and that there is a negative or affirmative acknowledgement conveyed back whether a taxi driver will accept it, and which one. This requires the sharing of information and an explicit agreement of a transaction between two parties. In such an arrangement the client will wait for the specific driver to come to him and forego other taxis that may become readily available while waiting. The taxi driver will come directly to the client, possibly bypassing other street hailing clients along the way. It is incumbent for both parties to identify each other by some means (e.g. a person looking for specific identifying markers on the taxi vehicle).
2) “hailing a taxi” is a person standing outside, typically street-side, drawing attention to any taxi on a random basis by raising their hand indicating they want to be picked up (“hailing”). According to NYC regulators, as an example, the absence of any “pre-arrangement” is defined as a “hail”. Some markets like NYC are by regulation a “hail only” market. This means taxis cannot communicate with persons needing a taxi ride and pre-arrange for service. As such taxis have no central point to communicate with (a dispatch center) to relay the pick-up and deployment of passengers. In such a regulated environment they are forbidden to have any other means of pre-arranging a pick-up with a prospective client, whether through the use of physical dispatch center or through any electronic means such a Smartphone app that's designed for “pre-arranged” services (such as the companies mentioned above). Drivers in NYC are required to pick up the first or closest person they physically see “hailing” a taxi.
In areas of high density there can be efficiencies and simplicity of having taxis drive around picking of people immediately upon seeing them. This can prove to be simple and quick for passengers too. The challenge taxi drivers have is that they can only see “hailing” persons who are within their line of sight, therefore limiting their view of persons needing a taxi. Drivers have many obstructions in fulfilling the need of picking up hailing persons (e.g. large trucks in the roads, not seeing around buildings on street corners, poor weather, limited range of sight in darkness, etc). Many times a taxi driver has to randomly drive around looking for passengers. People needing a taxi often have to physically search for a taxi by walking to busy avenues.